Click on the movie poster or the title above to download our review of the film, featuring Sean Ryan of the Alpha Counter podcast.

Review in a Nutshell: Strong set design and the presence of Ron Perlman are not enough to save Alien: Resurrection, a film that is saddled with a mediocre Joss Whedon script and the bizarre cinematic affectations of Jean-Pierre Jeunet.

19 Responses

Paul, I actually liked this one – it had a nice quirky, dark fairytale feel to it, which is really the only direction the ALIEN series could have gone after three movies. And you really can’t hate a movie where Ripley’s got swagger!

I would have loved to see what else Whedon and Jeunet could have done together – I felt their talents complemented each other very well. But I gather that’s very much a minority opinion….

The thing I like about the Alien Quadrilogy(yeah, I know, it is a silly term) is that each of them has a different auteur vision. They also pretty much fall under different subgenres: Alien is a horror film; Aliens is an action film; Alien 3 is an arthouse/music video film; and Alien 4 is a goofy, European comic film. I prefer the failures of Alien 3 and Alien 4 over mediocre, playing it safe sequels.

PS — I will like to apologize to the Greatest Movie Ever Podcast Community, especially Darly Sarut and the Almighty Gooberzilla, for my dickish comment in the The Raid thread. I promise It won’t happen again.

Strangely, Antho42, I didn’t consider your comment “Dickish” – or maybe I Just Feel Darryl Surratt Needs To Be Smacked Down More. I admit, since he and his Dittoheads insulted and patronized my wife on this blog, I may have personal reasons for feeling that way….

I agree, mainly, with your take on The ALIEN – let’s call it “Series”, since I don’t like “Quadrilogy” either. I don’t know if I’d quite consider Fincher’s work an “art film”, though I’m sure he’d like you to think that – any more than I think Zack Snyder is a “visionary director” just because he likes playing around with music-video and ad-style effects in post-production! ALIEN 3 is my least-favorite of the ALIEN movies – and that includes the B-movie AVP ones, which are just…mediocre.

Totally off topic, apologies all round… I haven’t listened to this yet, but I was catching up on some older ones when I believe I heard Sean mention his “other podcast.” Say wha-? We The People need to know about this other ‘cast! Spill!

Indeed the BTS video of Ripley throwing the basketball is worth checking out, also because of Ron Perlman’s reaction.

The original design for the Newborn was so much cooler but less Giger-esque and more Alien fan fiction-type: basically it was about to be a giant white skinned Alien with red veins running through it and pincers. I don’t know how they landed on yellow amorphous bloblien as they did

The Newborn probably also gets hate for its casual dispatching of the Alien Queen, one of the great sci-fi horror icons

Unless it’s purposefully being done to get a rise out of me the way I would always try to insert a Ralph Bakshi slam into the podcasts SOMEWHERE regardless of topic appropriateness (these now get edited out): c’mon, people. My name isn’t THAT difficult to spell.

The observation that there are now more bad Alien films than good ones has made me realize that I’ve actually never SEEN a good Alien movie in the theaters. I saw Alien 3, then this, then the second AVP. It says a lot about that list of films that the BEST one of those was the second AVP by virtue of it being the most violent.

This one, Resurrection, is easily the worst of the set. Contrary to the podcast’s claims, I don’t think the cast is particularly at fault here. These are by and large some pretty great character actors. For me the problem is 100% in the script and direction, and I’m fairly convinced that the lamest stuff in this film–“bought out by Wal-Mart”, “I’m the monster’s mother” etc–is all right there on the page. This isn’t a matter of “oh, they just didn’t realize it properly.” This is a matter of something THINKING “man, this is gonna be so great!”

For years I’d been saying they just need to add back pulse rifles into these movies so they’d be good again. Thank you, Alien Resurrection, for showing me it’s possible to make a bad movie that has pulse rifles in it. You managed to make the impossible possible. It’s not just for Blinky the Koala and Mu La Flaga anymore.

Daryl: It may not have sounded that way in the podcast, but I actually agree in thinking that the cast themselves were fine, but they were not at all right (or at least used properly) for this movie. Except, of course, for Ron Perlman. Like I said, I’ve seen Winona Ryder act well; just not here.

I’m personally not keen on the Nostalgia Critic’s approach, as it strikes me as being a little too hip for the subject matter, although I understand that’s all part of the persona. But if someone wants to give them a shout-out, that’s fine with me.

I saw Alien: Resurrection once before. I enjoyed it. I was also ten years old. This thing is…bad. I’m a huge Joss Whedon fan, obviously, and even though he wrote the screenplay, I know that he hates the film and has disowned it. So as I watched the movie this time, I tried following along with an early version of the script ( http://www.horrorlair.com/scripts/alienresurrection_early.html ) just to see how big the differences were.

Paul, I don’t see why you would think Aliens was a boring film. Granted, it might start out slow, but with the character interactions with all of the Colonial Marines makes that time before the first xenomorph an engaging movie for me.

I am freaking stoked to get the new Aliens: Colonial Marines game early next year, since I have been looking forward to that game for the past few years now.